Re: XML Linking 1.0 and XML Base become W3C Recommendations

[Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>]

On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Tim Bray wrote:
[...]
> That won't happen unless somebody
> buckles down and writes some code to show what it can
> do.

I'm curious to know why this hasn't happened yet, when other
aspects of XML+friends have been so fruitfully exploited, even
before publication of drafts. Maybe everyone just has their
hands full.

It's particularly interesting given that there have been
products containing a large amount of the functionality of XLink
around for a decade or more (DynaText and Panorama, to name the
two obvious candidates), so it cannot be for want of example.

Specific things I get asked for are

1. Multi-headed links, so that a click on the text (or icon, or
whatever instantiation is chosen) causes a menu of targets to
drop down and allow the user to select one. Model: windowing
file managers where a right-click on a file icon produces a menu
of possible actions.

2. Out-of-band links, where a user-maintained object stores
paired or multiply-associated URIs linking sets of two or more
end-points in the target files *without the user needing
write-access to any of the files pointed to*. When any of the
files referenced is accessed, the browser adds the personalised
link icon to the passages pointed to by the relevant URIs.

3. Link management software which will activate when a user
edits or creates a link, and places a reciprocal marker in
the target document (assuming it is write-accessible). 

///Peter